God is Just and Remembers
- Thread starter Motar
- Start date
I believe I'll join you. Pity we can't do it together, I think you'd be fine company. What do you favour, beer, wine, rye, gin, vodka, single malt scotch? That last is my favourite tipple.
Irish whiskey. I don't drink much, being Native and all. Usually Green Spot or Redbreast. More like Speysides than Islays. Not as smoky.
Concerning religion, James the brother of Jesus observes:
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27, NIV)
The apostle Paul adds:
“Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.“ (1 Timothy 5:3-4)
Don't think I understand what being Native has to do with it. I know there's a lot of racist crap around about Natives and alcohol, but it's not true in my experience, it seems to be mostly the confirmation bias fallacy.
Yep, I'm with you on that one, don't much like the heavy, smoky ones like Laphroaig or Lagavulin, I'll take a Macallan, a Glenmorangie, or a Balvenie. Unfortunately the list of what's available where I live is rather limited, no doubt something to do with the small market, have to go next door to Calgary or Winnipeg for a good selection. And Scotland of course is the best place to go, it'd take years to sample everything available there. I've spent a total of four weeks there in two visits and barely got started. There was a bar around the corner from where we were staying in Edinburgh called Mathers which claimed to have over 150 different kinds, and that's by no means all of them.
Having played music in bars in my younger days, I found that natives were quiet drunks and whites were the rowdy ones....
The prophet Daniel receives and records a prophecy concerning a future Israeli covenant with many:
“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” (Daniel 9:24-27, NIV)
How do the current peace treaties between Israel and neighboring Arab countries fit into this prophesied scenario?
“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” (Daniel 9:24-27, NIV)
How do the current peace treaties between Israel and neighboring Arab countries fit into this prophesied scenario?
They don't, that has nothing to do with contemporary times. The apocalyptic bits of Daniel are about the persecution of Jews by the Seleucids during the period of the exile.
What does the word god represent? For most people it represents an omnipotent entity that created the Universe but is not part of it, which takes a personal interest in our lives. That entity does not exist. It is pure fabrication by an immature, insecure ego that cannot come to terms with its own insignificance.
Let me put it this way:
Horton Hears a Who – Horton was an elephant who hears a voice coming from a spec of dust floating by. He eventually discovers that an entire civilization occupies this tiny spec of dust and they are calling out to see if there are any other life forms out there occupying other specs of dust. Does this sound familiar? We are the Who that Horton hears.
Horton is an entity that occupies a world with a multitude of other entities and this world is just a spec of dust to other worlds occupied by a multitude of other entities… ad infinitum. There is no way that the Who can comprehend who or what Horton is. In our terms, the Who would think that Horton was a god. But Horton did not create anything nor is he any more divine than any other entity.
Taken as a metaphor, the story parallels our own. We occupy a tiny spec of dust in an infinite sea of dust and we are trying to contact other specs of dust (SETI) to see if we are alone or not in the infinite sea. Our comprehension of the vastness of this sea is infinitesimal. We call this sea the Universe and nothing in it exists outside or separate from it. There may be other universes out there but that is a speculation that is of no use to this discussion.
Thanks for your response, Dex. This word and vision were delivered by Gabriel, the man seen by Daniel in an earlier vision whom Daniel states came to him in swift flight:
“While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill— while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision” (Daniel 9:20-23)
“While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill— while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision” (Daniel 9:20-23)
Okay, even granting for the sake of argument that any of that is true, why would Daniel be given a vision about events more than 2000 years in the future? It seems pointless to me to think that apocalyptic passages anywhere in the Bible have anything to do with modern events, they have to do with events that were current at the time they were written. How else could Daniel's contemporaries have made any sense of the book?
The prophet Daniel is given a vision for the good of all who believe and for the glory of God, Dex. Through prophecy, believers are informed, encouraged and prepared, and God is confirmed when these things come about as predicted.
There are layers of revelation in Scripture which contain both microscopic (near) and telescopic (distant) views. I know this is tiresome to hear but these things are spiritually discerned. The capacity to comprehend the breadth of the message is given by God through the Spirit. Ask for wisdom.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.“ (James 1:5)
Are you a jehovah witness Motar? you sure sound like one or a reborn Christian?
I call them retreads....
I call them retreads....
I am not anything you have described, DS.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come (that person is a new creation): The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I am a new creation in Christ.
As you have probably realized by now, I don't think any of that is true, largely because I don't believe god is real. Things don't come about as predicted, there's not one reliably recorded case of a biblical prophecy coming true. There are some recorded within the Bible itself, some New Testament passages have clearly been twisted to make them appear to fulfil certain Old Testament prophecies, but you can't demonstrate the truth of anything by such self-reference. There are also people who try to twist current events into a form that'll seem to fulfil certain biblical prophecies, especially Revelation, but the prophecies themselves are so vaguely couched in such arcane symbology, and it takes such extraordinary sophistry to force fit things, that it lacks all credibility. The now banned poster called MHz was a master at it, but as far as I know never convinced anyone of anything.
That is, of course, a big part of it. But I speculate that, not having had alcohol for millennia, and therefore not having the chance to get used to it, we never reduced the alcoholic genes in our gene pool.
Similarly, I notice that lots of White people are easily addicted to nicotine, but many, many Natives I know can take and enjoy cigarettes, but it doesn't bother them when they're not available or affordable. Perhaps a similar familiarization.
Either way, don't seem like going easy on the booze is a bad idea.
There's better stuff in Scotland than ever left it.
If it's of interest to you, probably the most simply drinkable Irish is The Proper Twelve. Reasonably priced and far better than Jameson or Bushmills, the usual offerings. But at some point you have to try Green Spot, Redbreast, and Greenore.
Wouldn't mind buying you a few rounds if the opportunity ever arises.
Wisdom is knowing a con when you see one. The bible is the most plagiarized book ever written. It is and always has been a book designed to control the masses. It was put together by Constantine to end the fighting between all the different religious factions that were tearing apart the Roman Empire of his day. Wisdom is knowing this and Dex has that wisdom. You do not.